Internet provider expands to Africa

TINTSWALO BALOYI
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – HURRICANE Electric, rated the world’s largest IPv6-native internet backbone, has continued its global expansion with the opening of its most recent Point of Presence (PoP) in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Located at Teraco’s Isando data centre, it is Hurricane Electric’s first PoP on the African continent.

With the launch of this latest PoP, networks and Internet Service Providers will now have the opportunity to exchange IP traffic or “peer” with Hurricane Electric’s robust global network via Africa’s largest Internet eXchange Point (IXP), NAPAfrica.

The new PoP will also provide businesses based within Southern Africa access to the company’s IPv4 and IPv6 network through 100GE (100 Gigabit Ethernet), 10GE (10 Gigabit Ethernet) and GigE (1Gigabit Ethernet) ports and as a result, both new and existing customers will be able to experience increased throughput, reduced latency and improved reliability.

In addition, clients will enjoy improved fault tolerance, load balancing and congestion management infrastructure capabilities in the delivery of next generation IP services.

Hurricane Electric is connected to over 135 major exchange points and exchanges traffic directly with more than 5 400 different networks.

“As a result of this new PoP, Teraco’s clients will have direct access to Hurricane Electric’s network, which spans across the world,” says van Wyk.

With a nationwide presence, Teraco is one of the largest data centres in Africa as well as the first provider of resilient, carrier, cloud and vendor neutral data environments in Southern Africa. Mike Leber, President, Hurricane Electric, says the company is excited to be expanding into Africa.